Arvid Lindblad has admitted to feeling “quite nervous” ahead of his Free Practice 1 outing at the Mexico City Grand Prix, with the British racer mindful of the championship situation as he prepared to take the wheel of title hopeful Max Verstappen’s Red Bull for a session that the rookie assessed as “really good”.
Lindblad was one of nine rookie drivers to participate in the opening hour of practice at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, marking his second FP1 appearance following his debut run at Silverstone back in July.
While he ended that previous session in P14 on the timesheets, the 18-year-old fared even better this time around and claimed P6, marking the highest finish amongst the rookies.
Reflecting back on this result and his FP1 as a whole, Lindblad said: “Yeah, it was good. Going into the session I was quite nervous, obviously also because of the situation we’re in at the moment with the championship and stuff, so it was even more important not to make any mistakes or do any damage.
“I focused on just trying to keep it clean and [to] give good feedback, also to be towards the front end of the timesheets, and it was really good.”
It was a session not entirely without incident for Lindblad, who was issued with a warning later on after being found to have impeded McLaren’s Pato O’Ward – another rookie in action – into Turn 9.
When asked about the challenge of managing these situations in FP1, Lindblad conceded: “It was really difficult. It was super messy. I think we were quite often out of sequence and then there’s guys doing long runs, and it’s really not easy on a pretty short track.
“It wasn’t easy and especially as a rookie there’s a lot of things to deal with, so I could do it better. I think I’ve got a bit of work to do on that side.”
Overall, however, Lindblad reflected positively on his session and also felt that Red Bull were satisfied with the job he had done.
“I think they were quite happy,” the F2 driver explained. “I think the pace was decent, it’s back in one piece. I think they thought my feedback was solid as well.
“I think from my side there’s not really much more I could do, just trying to point them in a good direction. We’ll see now what Max says, but it seemed like it wasn’t too bad, so I think they were overall quite happy.”
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